Huawei: We want to work with Nokia, not fight for consumers

Huawei wants to work with Microsoft and Nokia to "build love" for Windows Phone rather than battle against the manufacturer in a market that leaves little room for competitors to work alongside one another, according to a report over at Pocket-lint. Mind you, this is after we covered Huawei looking to purchase Nokia. Anything's possible, right?

Things are believed to be going well for Huawei, who says its enjoying success with over 1 million Ascend W1 units sold in Europe and the US. Huawei's Kevin Ho spoke with Pocket-lint to reveal that the company would rather work with, not fight Nokia for consumers. The end goal is to "build a better Windows Phone platform." We can't argue with that.

Ho does admit that Windows Phone is still a very difficult sell over the iPhone and Android hardware, noting how it's harder to ship devices running Microsoft's OS when such popular competitors are already well-established. Ho states that Huawei is expecting to sell over 10 million Ascend P6 units, which is just a slight increase on top of the Ascend W1 numbers.

"Compared to Android, Windows Phone is difficult to sell. Most people like Android, they are familiar with Android, but they need time to accept Windows Phone and make it familiar."

We've been here before with Acer and other manufacturers stating the same thing - Windows Phone is hard to sell. But then we have Nokia who has thrown all the eggs into one basket and appears to be holding out, pulling in stronger network operator support and building brand awareness. One has to think to oneself if it's simply due to OEMs not really putting enough effort into marketing their Windows Phones?

Whatever may be the reason or cause for concern, Windows Phone still has a long way to go to not only win the hearts of consumers, but manufacturers too. We only have to look at Samsung to see a lonely boy who can't help but dip his foot into the Microsoft mobile pond. Huawei is set to launch the Ascend W2, an upcoming budget Windows Phone.

Huawei will start to produce their phones here in Brazil in the next month. Hope they will sell their Windows Phones also. Here we only have Nokia Lumias e the Samsung Ativ S. I will like to see more variety in the Brazilian market...

How about HTC give love to their 8S and 8X.? Heck, they're just advertising their HTC One for a long time now on their Fb pages..?! Then they expect or blame MS that they're not selling WP phones very well..

Huawei, this is a capitalism...I understand making the WP platform more relevant by not competing against each other/working together, but competition makes OEMs innovate. Nokia is doing that by showing their camera and rich recording innovations -and even their super low cost phones for people who don't want to spend a zillion dorra on a phone. Give me a reason to own a Huawei WP and I will consider your brand and maybe others will consider as well.

..most every tech company, phone carrier does/did that here in the US. There is an infographic showing how much you would have to change your daily tech habits just to have "privacy." It is near impossible to avoid the data mining that the NSA was/is doing. Plus I am in the information security field, so I am not that naive that this was going on BEFORE it was leaked, so this does not bother me one bit.

Authoritarian governments such as the one Huawei is located in...would not surprise me if they did that too.

Well, I can give you a few reasons based on my own expirience.
Here, in Russia, Ascend W1 is cheaper than any Lumia, even 520.
It have much better battery, slightly faster processor, front facing camera, LED flashlight.
Phone is very well assembled.
As a minus - it have only 4G of intermal memory, but I have no problems with that - as long it's not a flagship device, its quite enough for me.

Ok so let me get this correct... Huawei (and some extent Samsung) LOVE Android because more people know about it and so it is "easy to sell", whereas it is not the case with Windowsphone...ha! So wait....just make phones with multi- sizes of displays and put some megapixel camera and let people buy it without doing any innovations... Cool... Way to go OEMS (Not talking about Nokia Obviously!!) /s You are only interested in making quick profit....

wp doesnt have what 99% of android users want and that is wallpapers on hs.i know its stupid but that is what it is.ppl that i spend time with used to have some cheap mobile phones,now most of them use some cheap android phone.they are not power users and they only listen mp3,play couple of free games and change that wallpapers.

That's always been my theory. WP and the people complaining about metro on windows 8 are just upset that the tiles are covering up what they believe is the most beautiful image ever. What should matter is how an os functions and windows 8 and wp8 function really well. If look carefully at the complaints, most of these people are really complain about the appearance, not the functionality.

99% of Android users... really? I'm still yet to meet someone that has said they bought a device to look at the wallpaper. I have, however, met 100% of people that say they buy a device to use it (i.e.- not sitting around looking at the wallpaper). People want something they can glance at quickly and be done with it. This is one of the aspects that Windows Phone is a mixed bag. Live tiles are better than static ones, but there is no notification system. Given most Android users are using low-end hardware, I really can't imagine they are using a ton of widgets (a few, sure). Thus, I would say you could almost lump Android and iOS together. Of course, I think most would agree that if Apple made a compelling device that sold for the same as the ultra-low Android...Android's marketshare would be a lot different (as would Apple's).

dude,99% dont even know what is widget and dont even know how to rearange those 5 or 6 screens.look little better around you and you will see that most people with smart phones are dumb and dont know jack s*it.they are not powerusers and lots of them dont even have credits on phone to make a call so they are on fb"0" all the time .if you miss all that around you it only shows that you are blind.
ps.dont be smarta*s

I'm just going to giggle at this. I'm sorry if that upsets you. Please show some data on your claims that Windows Phone doesn't have what 99% of Android users want. Similarly, that 99% of Android users don't use widgets. Your sample size to your claim, based on your original statement, is waaaaaaaaay too small and hardly diverse. I'm sure your statement can be true among your circle of friends. That doesn't mean your circle of friends is representative of the rest of the world. Your claim doesn't even look at market numbers, trends, etc. The fact widgets exist and have not been eliminated after so many iterations of Android would imply that more than 1% use the feature. Do I know the percentage? No, but nor am I claiming that I do. I am claiming that something that goes unused by users gets eliminated. Why? Why spend the time and ultimately money to do the extra coding as a developer if no one is using the feature? I don't know the name of HTCs skin, but I can recognize most HTC Android phones because of that one weather widget it is often displaying. Go figure that the only why I could tell you what the new HTC One looks like is because of the front facing speakers as it neglects to sort that app. There would also be some serious problems if people didn't know how to rearrange icons. Do people sometimes need a friend's help to figure it out? Absolutely! Do some people exist that think they are locked in place and never speak up? Absolutely. However, they do not represent 99% of the world's Android users. That's just an absurd claim, particularly based on the facts.

While I can only imagine you are going to be even more upset after my comment, it needs to be said. Too many people make bogus claims based on their own little bubble. I'm not going to call someone out making a plausible claim, but 99%? Really? Unless you have multiple sources backing up a claim of essentially saying "almost everyone", I'm calling you and anyone else I read saying it out. If I based the world on my little personal bubble, Android has 1 user. Windows Phone is actually sitting really quite pretty with better than 1/3 of all phones, and Apple blows the compeition out of the water. If I base it on phones I have seen in peoples hand, data I have read from reliable sources, etc. Android has a huge lead over anyone else. Hopefully you can understand that point I am trying to make here and respect that I'm not attacking you personally. I'm trying to correct a bogus claim that you made.

WP's issue is winning the mindshare battle. And that shit is difficult to do when so many people ("writers", and bloggers especially) devote so much time to putting out FUD, and trash about MS and everything they do.

Are there any phone OEM's that "work together" instead of competing? Not sure what they mean here, they can promote the OS and their devices but not sure why they would need to work with Nokia for that. Or did I miss a joint Nokia HTC initiative somewhere? Seems everyone wants to ride on the success of Nokia and not do any actual work to promote the OS.

100% agree with you. I wanted Nokia back so I bought my 920 and some shares while I was at it. I believe in this company and I fell in love with my WP8. And that was at launch, we're finally getting the big app names!

Microsoft and Nokia were the perfect match as far as I was concerned -- I switched from Android (v1.6) to WP7 out of curiosity back in late 2010 while I've loved all my previous Nokia phones, from the 2110 (which I still have) to the N95. I know that three of my friends bought 920s on the basis of prior good experiences with Nokia, though, two of them switching from iPhones, the other happy to stick with Nokia after his N8.

While I thank Nokia for all its hard work to bring brand awareness to WP, I bought my Trophy for the OS, since then I've upgraded to the 8X. I'm loyal to OS, not the hardware, although; if Verizon offered the Lumia 928 before my upgrade, I would of gone with that.

@The_Traveler...I bought my WP (Lumia 900) because of Nokia as well. I've been eyeing WP since it was revealed on Engadget in July 2010, but was not compelled AT ALL by the offerings of LG, Samsung, or HTC.

Why would anyone work at all with them? They are notorious for stealing every god damn thing under the sun. That would be like letting the fox in the hen house. Nokia would have to be the dumbest people on the planet to even show them how to turn one of these things on.

Considering it's a budget phone, I doubt they'll do any kind of advertising since they're new entrants in the Windows Phone market. That alone will make Huawei Windows Phone completely unknown to consumers.

I like this part of the article- "Ho does admit that Windows Phone is still a very difficult sell over the iPhone and Android hardware, noting how it's harder to ship devices running Microsoft's OS when such popular competitors are already well-established."

The low end needs to be lower. Android rules the world marketshare because it is still relatively uncontested there. Every single prepaid carrier needs to have a Windows Phone option that is selling within a few dollars of the lowest Android. American's have a terrible perspective of what the rest of the world is like when it comes to phone usage thanks to contract subsidies. I really hope TMobile has tons of success and their new method becomes the new norm. The other funny part is that he doesn't want to compete with Nokia for customers. There are about 3.5 billion people without smartphones. There are some number of iOS devices in the remainder. These are just excuses for why they are going less than half-hearted.

Maybe if the sent more time adding new fetures and creating their own apps for devices and being fully committed to Windows Phone it wouldnt be such a big deal. I think If I was an OEM I would follow Nokia and go exclusivly Windows Phone. We need more OEMs fully committed. Just my $0.02

I'm surprised no one congratulated Huawei on selling 1 million Wp W1's. That's pretty good! That's better than HTC and Samsung, probably combined. If they can add their twist on WPs, I'd consider them one day.

The OEM's have to remember that Apple and Samsing's dominance of the market is because they marketing the crap out of their products. HTC, Huawei, LG, Sony are all receiving free rides when it comes to marketing Android because Samsung is doing all the heavy lifting. Just because I see a commerical for the S4 doesn't mean I instantly forget about all the other Android devices. It's still Android... And Samsung is promoting the same OS that powers all their competitors hardware.
The same should go for Windows Phone. But Nokia doesn't have the power of Samsung. They need Microsoft, Huawei, HTC, and even Samsung to start pushing forward with Windows Phone. I get the feeling that HTC and Samsung are only here for the short haul. HTC is probably holding out for when Samsung pushes more towards Tizen so then HTC can take over Android. But that's just an opinion.
I think Nokia is doing a great job promoting their hardware. But I think more OEMs need to do more. They're just leaving the marketing up to Microsoft and Nokia which isn't going to work. Even the carriers are failing - look at Bell Mobility. Bell hasn't done anything with Windows Phone. And Microsoft needs to pick up the pace. We need many more major features. Let's hope they come this fall or early 2014... The earlier the better!

Hi everybody, Uncle Ho here. Boy, I tell ya, these Windows phones are hard to sell. I just don't see how we're going to make a buck on these things. Huh? We sold a MILLION of them? Yeah, but, you know, it was a tough sell. C'mon, jeez Louise people. What's a million anyway? Couple thousand or so? (is that right?) It's a lot more than a couple of thousand? Crap, this base 10 numbering system is difficult to understand.